ir-  of 

Annual  J^incoLn.^  ^Dinner- 
of  the  Svepublican^  (blub  of  ike 
(Bity  of  <1&ew 
1( 


LINCOLN  ROOM 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 
HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


-  -£•  „  O^c 


By  kind  permission  of  Paul  Dana,  Esq.,  this  edi- 
tion of  five  hundred  numbered  copies  of  "Lin- 
coln and  his  Cabinet"  has  been  printed  on 
American  hand-made  paper  for  the  Republican 
Club  of  the  City  of  New-York,  at  the  Marion 
Press,  Jamaica,  Queensborough,  New-  York. 


No. 


LINCOLN 
AND   HIS   CABINET 

A  LECTURE  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE 
NEW  HAVEN  COLONY  HISTORICAL 
SOCIETY,  TUESDAY,  MARCH  10,  1896 

BY 
CHARLES  ANDERSON  DANA 

ASSISTANT  SECRETARY  OF  WAR,  1863—65 


SOUVENIR  OF  THE 

THIRTEENTH  ANNUAL  LINCOLN  DINNER 

OF  THE  REPUBLICAN  CLUB  OF  THE 

CITY  OF  NEW-YORK 

1899 


Copyright,  1896,  by  C.  A.  DANA. 

The  portrait  of  President  Lincoln  and  the  repro- 
duction of  "The  First  Reading  of  the  Emanci- 
pation Proclamation  "  are  from  the  paintings  by 
Mr.  Frank  B.  Carpenter,  and  are  used  with  his 
kind  permission. 


LINCOLN  AND  HIS  CABINET 

Jl 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  President  1861-65. 
Born  in  Hardin  County,  Kentucky,  February  1 2, 
1809;  died  at  Washington,  April  15,  1865. 

WILLIAM  HENRY  SEWARD,  Secretary  of 
State  1861-69.  Born  at  Florida,  New  York, 
May  1 6,  1801;  died  at  Auburn,  New  York, 
October  10,  1872. 

SALMON  PORTLAND  CHASE,  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury  1861-64.  Born  at  Cornish,  New 
Hampshire,  January  13,  1808;  died  at  New 
York,  May  7,  1873. 


WILLIAM  PITT  FESSENDEN,  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury  1864—65.  Born  at  Boscawen, 
New  Hampshire,  October  1 6,  1 806  ;  died  at 
Portland,  Maine,  September  8,  i  869. 

SIMON  CAMERON,  Secretary  of  War  1861- 
62.  Born  in  Lancaster  County,  Pennsylvania, 
March  8,  1799;  died  there  June  26,  1889. 

EDWIN  McMASTERS  ST ANTON,  Secretary 
of  War  1862-68.  Born  at  Steubenville,  Ohio, 
December  19,  1814;  died  at  Washington,  De- 
cember 24,  1869. 

GIDEON  WELLES,  Secretary  of  the  Navy 
1861—69.  Born  at  Glastonbury,  Connecticut, 
July  I,  1802;  died  at  Hartford,  Connecticut, 
February  n,  1878. 

CALEB  BLOOD  SMITH,  Secretary  of  the  In- 
terior 1861—62.  Born  at  Boston,  Massachusetts, 
April  1 6,  1808;  died  at  Indianapolis,  Indiana, 
January  7,  1864. 

6 


JOHN  PALMER  USHER,  Secretary  of  the  In- 
terior 1 863-65.  Born  at  Brookfield,  New  York, 
January  9,  1 8 1 6  ;  died  at  Philadelphia,  Penn- 
sylvania, April  13,  1889. 

EDWARD  BATES,  Attorney- General  1861-64. 
Born  at  Belmont,  Virginia,  September  4,  1793  ; 
died  at  St.  Louis,  March  25,  1869. 

JAMES  SPEED,  Attorney-General  1864-66. 
Born  in  Jefferson  County,  Kentucky,  March  1 1 , 
1812;  died  there  June  25,  1887. 

MONTGOMERY  BLAIR,  Postmaster-General 
1861—64.  Born  in  Franklin  County,  Kentucky, 
May  10,  1813;  died  at  Silver  Spring,  Mary- 
land, July  27,  1883. 

WILLIAM  DENNISON,  Postmaster-General 
1864—66.  Born  at  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  Novem- 
ber 23,  1815;  died  at  Columbus,  Ohio,  June 
15,  1882. 


LINCOLN 
AND  HIS  CABINET 


HAVE  been  invited  to 
tell  you  some  recollec- 
tions of  impressions  that 
were  made  upon  me  dur- 
ing the  period  when  I  was  serving 
at  Washington  and  in  the  field  under 
President  Lincoln  and  Edwin  M.  Stan- 
ton.  I  felt  no  special  anxiety  to  per- 
form this  duty,  but  it  seemed  to  me 
as  though  I  ought  not  to  decline  it. 
The  number  of  those  who  knew  those 
b  Q 


men  face  to  face,  and  saw  them  inti- 
mately during  the  time  that  tried  men's 
souls,  is  already  small,  and  growing 
smaller;  and  it  is  a  duty  to  record  the 
impressions  and  to  narrate  the  facts  of 
those  times  and  of  those  relations. 

The  election  of  Abraham  Lincoln  was 
brought  about  by  a  dissension  in  the 
Democratic  party.  It  was  divided,  and 
the  Republican  party  was  united,  and 
the  consequence  was  his  election.  The 
great  question  at  issue  in  that  election, 
although  I  do  not  think  it  was  formally 
stated  in  the  platforms  of  the  parties, 
was  this :  Shall  the  owners  of  slaves  en- 
joy the  right  of  taking  their  slaves  into 
the  Territories  of  the  United  States  that 
are  now  free,  and  keeping  them  there? 
The  slave-owners  claimed  that  right. 

10 


Slaves  were  property.  They  were  like 
other  property,  and  why  should  their 
owners  be  denied  the  right  of  taking 
their  property  into  the  Territories,  when 
a  Northern  man  could  take  his  prop- 
erty—  his  horses,  his  oxen,  whatever  he 
possessed?  The  slaves  were  their  oxen; 
they  were  their  chattels ;  and  they  in- 
sisted that  they  ought  to  have  the  right 
of  taking  them  into  the  Territories,  and 
keeping  them  there  as  slaves.  That  was 
the  fundamental  question  of  the  election. 
And  when  Mr.  Lincoln  was  elected  the 
South  said:  "Now  we  are  denied  this 
right,  we  will  break  up  the  government; 
we  will  secede ;  we  will  withdraw."  That 
right,  too,  they  claimed  as  a  constitu- 
tional principle.  No  Northerner  had 
claimed  it,  though  some  ardent  partizans 
ii 


had  threatened  it;  but  several  of  the 
Southern  States  now  set  it  up  as  an  origi- 
nal, inalienable  right.  They  claimed  that 
the  refusal  to  them  of  the  right  to  take 
their  property  with  them  when  they  went 
to  live  in  one  of  the  new  Territories  was 
sufficient  occasion  for  the  withdrawal 
from  the  Union  of  the  slaveholding 
States,  and  for  the  breaking  up  of  the 
government. 

That  question  was  to  be  determined 
by  war,  and  as  soon  as  Abraham  Lincoln 
was  elected  they  began  to  prepare  for 
war ;  and  when  he  became  President  we 
began,  on  our  side,  to  prepare  for  war. 
Previous  to  his  inauguration  there  had 
been  no  preparation.  When  Mr.  Lincoln 
was  inaugurated  as  President  his  first 
act  was  to  name  his  cabinet;  and  it  was 


12 


a  common  remark  at  the  time  that  he 
had  put  into  the  cabinet  every  man  who 
had  competed  with  him  for  the  nomi- 
nation in  the  Republican  National  Con- 
vention. The  first  in  importance,  in 
consequence,  was  William  H.  Seward,  of 
New  York,  who  had  been  Mr.  Lincoln's 
most  prominent  competitor.  It  had 
been  feared  by  many  of  those  who  were 
opposed  to  Mr.  Seward's  friends  —  he 
had  no  personal  opposition,  but  some 
of  his  friends  had  a  good  deal  —  it  was 
feared  by  those  who  were  opposed  to  his 
friends  that  if  he  became  President  his 
friends  would  run  the  government,  and 
run  it  for  purposes  that  all  might  not 
approve.  He  was  made  Secretary  of 
State. 

It  is  worth  while  to  notice  this :  the 
'3 


great  opposition  against  Mr.  Seward  was 
because  he  was  a  New  Yorker,  and  the 
Republican  party  in  New  York  was  un- 
der the  control,  more  or  less  decided,  of 
what  is  called  a  "  boss."  And  they  said 
there  should  n't  be  any  boss,  but  that 
the  party  should  direct  itself.  Well, 
exactly  what  that  means  I  have  not  been 
able  to  understand.  An  army  without 
a  general  is  of  no  use,  and  a  ship  with- 
out a  captain  does  n't  get  navigated 
safely.  I  notice,  too,  that  the  class  of 
politicians  who  are  most  strenuous 
against  bosses  are  those  who  are  not 
able  to  control  for  themselves  the  boss 
who  happens  to  be  in  power  in  their 
district  or  their  State.  At  any  rate,  that 
objection,  managed  by  skillful  politi- 
cians, and  aided  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  per- 
'4 


sonal  popularity  in  the  West,  availed 
sufficiently  to  deprive  Mr.  Seward  of 
the  nomination. 

The  second  man  in  importance  to  be 
put  into  the  cabinet  was  Mr.  Chase  of 
Ohio.  He  was  a  very  able,  noble,  and 
spotless  statesman,  a  man  who  would 
have  been  worthy  of  the  best  days  of 
the  old  Roman  republic.  He  had  been 
a  candidate,  though  less  conspicuous 
than  Seward;  and  he  was  also  a  candi- 
date against  whom  the  opposition  that 
had  been  raised  against  Mr.  Seward 
would  not  have  availed,  because,  while 
Mr.  Seward  had  a  friend  who  was  the 
boss  of  the  Republican  party  in  New 
York,  Mr.  Chase  bossed  it  himself  in 
Ohio. 

Then  there  was  Mr.  Cameron  of 
15 


Pennsylvania.  He  was  made  Secretary 
of  War.  A  very  able  man,  a  practical 
politician  of  immense  knowledge  and 
resource,  in  earlier  days  a  friend  of 
General  Jackson,  one  of  the  first  and 
most  decided  statesmen  to  embrace  the 
Republican  cause  and  to  advocate  the 
Republican  doctrine.  He  held  the  office 
of  Secretary  of  War  only  a  little  over  a 
year,  I  think,  and  there  was  an  outcry 
against  him,  because  they  said  he  was 
buying  too  many  guns,  too  many  arms ; 
he  was  spending  too  much  money. 
And  those  who  were  against  bosses 
were  against  this  expenditure  because 
they  said  they  did  n't  think  it  could  be 
quite  correct.  But  all  these  things  were 
investigated  afterward,  and  nothing  was 
ever  proved  against  Simon  Cameron 
16 


except  this :  that  he  was  a  man  with  a 
manly  heart  in  his  bosom,  that  he  ap- 
preciated the  magnitude  of  the  contest 
that  was  upon  us,  and  prepared  for  it 
accordingly.  His  preparations  were 
equal  to  the  danger  at  hand,  and,  in- 
stead of  being  decried,  he  ought  to 
have  had,  and  finally  did  obtain,  the 
full  credit  to  which  he  was  entitled  as  a 
wise,  patriotic,  and  provident  statesman. 
Next,  Mr.  Bates  of  Missouri  was 
made  Attorney-General.  He  also  had 
been  run  a  good  deal  as  a  candidate  for 
the  Presidential  nomination  against  Mr. 
Seward,  but  there  had  never  been  any 
great  probability  that  he  would  get  it. 
He  was  a  most  eloquent  speaker,  and  a 
very  fair  lawyer,  and  he  served  out  his 
time  in  the  cabinet  until  the  end  of  the 
c  17 


administration.  He  was  an  amiable  and 
a  gifted  man,  entirely  creditable  and 
satisfactory,  without  possessing  any  ex- 
traordinary genius  or  any  unusual  force 
of  character. 

Then  there  was  Mr.  Caleb  B.  Smith 
of  Indiana,  who  was  Secretary  of  the 
Interior,  and  Montgomery  Blair  of 
Maryland,  a  Democrat  of  the  old 
school,  who  was  Postmaster-General; 
both  eminent,  able,  useful  men. 

I  must  not  forget,  especially  here  in 
New  Haven,  in  this  rapid  review  of  the 
assistants  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  the  members 
of  the  cabinet,  to  speak  of  the  Connec- 
ticut member,  Gideon  Welles.  He  was 
Secretary  of  the  Navy ;  and  I  am  happy, 
at  this  distance,  to  testify  to  the  fact 
that  he  was  an  excellent  Secretary.  He 
18 


was  a  man  of  no  decorations ;  there  was 
no  noise  in  the  street  when  he  went 
along ;  but  he  understood  his  duty,  and 
he  did  it  efficiently,  continually,  and  un- 
varyingly. Other  men  were  more  con- 
spicuous, because  they  were  brought 
more  immediately  in  contact  with  the 
people.  The  navy  is  off  at  sea,  and  we 
don't  see  all  the  time  what  it  is  doing. 
I  am  able  to  declare  that  Mr.  Welles 
was  a  perfectly  faithful,  able,  devoted, 
and  successful  public  officer.  The  navy 
under  his  control  was  far  more  efficient 
— it  is  true  it  was  larger — and  more 
energetic  than  it  had  ever  been  before 
in  our  day.  He  was  a  satisfactory  and 
substantial  member  of  the  government, 
and  was  always  creditable  to  the  State 
that  sent  him  forth. 

'9 


When  Mr.  Cameron  went  out  of  the 

>w 

cabinet,  Mr.  Lincoln,  following  the  ad- 
vice bofh  of  Cameron  and  of  Charles 
Sumner,  selected  as  his  successor  in  the 
War  Department  Mr.  Edwin  M.  Stan- 
ton.  Stanton  was  an  old  States'-rights 
Democrat.  He  had  never  voted  any- 
thing but  the  Democratic  ticket  up  to 
that  time.  He  was  a  very  extraordinary 
man,  and  it  was  through  him  that  I 
came  to  be  put  into  the  War  Depart- 
ment, and  had  the  opportunities  of  ac- 
quiring the  various  information  that  I 
hope  to  lay  before  you  this  evening. 

Mr.  Stanton  was  a  short,  thick,  dark 
man,  with  a  very  large  head  and  a  mass 
of  black  hair.  He  was  very  intense,  and 
one  of  the  most  eloquent  men  that  I 
ever  met.  He  was  entirely  absorbed  in 
20 


his  duties.  His  energy  was  something 
almost  superhuman,  and  when  he  took 
hold  of  the  War  Department  the  armies 
seemed  to  grow,  and  they  certainly 
gained  in  force  and  vim  and  thorough- 
ness. The  time  of  preparation,  which 
to  us  had  before  seemed  so  long  and 
tedious  that  we  were  almost  losing  hope 
—  that  time  came  to  an  end,  and  the 
time  of  action  began.  I  said  that  Mr. 
Stanton  was  a  very  eloquent  man.  In 
order  to  illustrate  that,  if  you  will  allow 
me,  I  will  tell  a  little  story.  In  the  last 
year  of  the  war  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac had  hanging  around  it  a  man,  a 
sort  of  peddler  —  I  think  his  name  may 
have  been  Morse,  but  I  don't  remem- 
ber positively;  it  was  something  like 
that.  He  went  back  and  forward  into 


21 


Virginia.  He  would  go  down  into  the 
rebel  lines,  and  then  he  would  come 
back.  When  he  went  down  he  went  in 
the  character  of  a  man  who  had  entirely 
hoodwinked  the  Washington  authori- 
ties and  deluded  them ;  and,  in  spite  of 
them,  or  by  some  corruption  or  other, 
he  always  brought  with  him  into  the 
Confederate  lines  something  that  the 
people  wanted  down  there,  some  dresses 
for  the  ladies,  or  some  little  luxury  that 
they  could  n't  get  otherwise. 

These  things  that  he  took  with  him 
were  always  supervised  by  government 
agents  before  he  went  away.  Then  he 
would  come  back  again,  and  bring  us  a 
lot  of  valuable  information.  As  you  see, 
he  was  a  kind  of  spy  for  both  sides.  So 
he  found  a  good  thing  in  it,  and  we 

22 


found  a  good  thing  in  it,  because  in 
that  way  we  got  a  great  deal  of  infor- 
mation about  the  strength  of  armies, 
about  the  preparations  and  the  move- 
ments of  the  enemy,  and  so  on;  and  it 
was  thought  to  be  sufficiently  useful  to 
allow  this  thing  to  go  on.  Well,  at  last 
he  came  back  and  went  to  Baltimore, 
and  got  his  outfit  to  take  down  South ; 
and  when  he  came  up  the  chief  detective 
of  the  War  Department  examined  his 
goods  carefully,  and  found  that  he  had 
got  lots  of  things  that  we  could  not 
allow  him  to  take.  We  had  all  his  bills, 
telling  where  he  had  bought  these  things 
in  Baltimore.  They  amounted  to  per- 
haps $20,000  or  $25,000,  or  more.  A 
good  deal  of  this  stuff  was  military 
goods  and  uniforms,  and  this,  we  said, 
23 


was  altogether  too  contraband.  So  we 
confiscated  the  contraband  goods,  and 
put  Morse  in  prison;  and  one  after- 
noon Colonel  Taylor,  a  very  valuable 
military  officer,  and  a  nephew  of  Presi- 
dent Taylor,  went  over  to  Baltimore, 
and  arrested  the  principal  merchants  of 
that  town,  who  had  sold  these  goods  to 
Morse, —  the  chief  dry-goods  dealers 
and  fancy  merchants, —  so  that  no  lady 
could  go  out  and  buy  even  a  pair  of 
gloves  the  next  day,  for  the  shops  were 
all  shut.  Presently  a  deputation  from 
Baltimore  came  over  to  see  President 
Lincoln,  to  say  that  this  was  a  great 
outrage,  and  that  these  gentlemen,  most 
respectable  merchants,  faultless  citizens, 
ought  all  to  be  set  instantly  at  liberty 
and  damages  paid  them.  Mr.  Lincoln 
24 


sent  the  deputation  over  to  the  War 
Department,  and  Mr.  Stanton  sent  for 
me.  He  said:  "All  Baltimore  is  com- 
ing here.  Sit  down  here,  and  hear  the 
discussion  we  shall  have."  So  they  came 
in,  the  bank  presidents  and  boss  mer- 
chants of  Baltimore.  There  must  have 
been  at  least  $50,000,000  in  the  depu- 
tation. 

The  gentlemen  sat  down  around  the 
fire  in  the  Secretary's  ofHce,  and  began 
to  make  their  speeches,  detailing  the 
circumstances  and  the  wickedness  of 
this  outrage.  There  was  no  ground  for 
it,  no  justification.  After  half  a  dozen 
of  them  had  spoken,  Mr.  Stanton  asked 
one  after  another  if  he  had  anything 
more  to  say,  and  they  all  said  no.  Then 
Stanton  began  and  delivered  the  most 
d  25 


eloquent  speech  that  I  ever  listened  to. 
He  described  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
for  which  he  said  there  was  no  justifica- 
tion. Being  beaten  in  an  election  was 
no  reason  for  destroying  the  govern- 
ment. Then  he  went  on  to  the  fact  that 
half  a  million  of  our  young  men  had 
been  laid  in  untimely  graves  by  this 
conspiracy  of  the  slave  interest.  He  de- 
scribed the  whole  conspiracy  in  the 
most  solemn  and  impressive  terms,  and 
then  he  depicted  the  offense  that  this 
man  Morse,  aided  by  these  several 
merchants,  had  committed.  He  said: 
"  Gentlemen,  if  you  would  like  to  ex- 
amine the  bills  of  what  he  was  taking  to 
the  enemy,  here  they  are."  And  when 
he  had  finished,  these  gentlemen,  with- 
out answering  a  word,  got  up,  and,  one 
26 


by  one,  went  away.  That  was  the  only 
speech  I  ever  listened  to  that  cleared 
out  the  entire  audience. 

Well,  that 's  the  sort  of  man  Stanton 
was.  He  was  impulsive,  warm-blooded, 
very  quick  in  execution,  perhaps  not  al- 
ways infallible  in  judgment.  I  never 
knew  a  man  who  could  do  so  much 
work  in  a  given  time.  He  was  a  ner- 
vous man,  a  man  of  imagination,  a 
man  utterly  absorbed  in  the  idea  of  the 
republic  one  and  indivisible;  and  he 
lived  for  it,  wore  himself  out  in  the  ser- 
vice, and  shortly  after  he  ceased  to  serve 
in  that  office  he  passed  into  another 
world,  entirely  exhausted,  consumed  by 
his  devotion  to  public  duties.  That  was 
the  kind  of  men  that  Mr.  Lincoln  had 
around  him  —  not  all  like  Stanton,  not 


all  like  Cameron,  not  all  like  Chase, 
but  all  faithful  to  their  duty,  all  Amer- 
icans, all  patriots. 

Mr.  Seward,  for  instance,  possessed  a 
great,  subtle,  far-reaching  intelligence. 
He  was  an  optimist.  He  had  imagi- 
nation. He  was  reaching  out  always 
toward  the  future,  and  dwelling  upon  it. 
The  treaty  by  which  we  acquired  Alaska 
was  his  doing.  He  also  negotiated  and 
arranged  the  treaty  that  Congress  would 
not  approve  for  the  acquisition  of  St. 
Thomas  in  the  West  Indies.  He  be- 
lieved that  North  America  should  be 
one  and  united  —  one  government,  one 
flag,  one  power.  His  idea  was  that  the 
islands  of  the  Antilles,  and  the  whole 
continent  up  to  the  frozen  regions  of 
the  Arctic  Ocean,  should  all  live  and 
28 


grow  great  and  mighty  with  that  beau- 
tiful emblem,  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  float- 
ing over  them. 

Probably  in  the  administration  Mr. 
Seward  had  the  most  cultivated  and 
comprehensive  intellect.  He  was  n't 
equal  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  because,  as  I  have 
said,  he  was  altogether  an  optimist. 
He  did  n't  believe  any  permanent  injury 
could  happen  to  anybody  so  long  as  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  were  there.  During 
the  war  it  was  always  said  that  he  ex- 
pected to  bring  back  the  seceding  States 
by  a  friendly  act  of  Congress,  or  some 
device  of  negotiation.  That  was  proba- 
bly a  fault  in  his  judgment;  yet,  take 
him  for  all  in  all,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  match  him  among  living  statesmen, 
or  among  the  statesmen  of  the  world. 
29 


He  was  an  American  in  earnest.  He 
believed  in  that  democracy  which  is  de- 
mocracy indeed.  He  believed  in  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and 
his  one  desire  was  that  its  blessings 
should  be  extended  and  made  perpetual 
over  all  this  continent.  I  look  back 
upon  him  with  intense  gratitude.  He 
set  up  the  landmarks  toward  which  we 
are  to  come,  the  boundaries  which  we 
are  to  attain  to.  He  proclaimed  the 
principle  of  continental  unity,  and  that 
unity  he  would  found  in  freedom,  in 
progress,  and  in  improvement  of  every 
nature. 

Such    were    the    principal    men    by 

whom    Mr.    Lincoln    was    surrounded. 

They    were    very    independent    men. 

They  were  not  always  satisfied  with  his 

30 


decisions,  with  his  action;  but  he  was 
always  master  of  the  house.  There  was 
no  pretension  about  Abraham  Lincoln ; 
he  did  n't  put  on  any  airs,  and  I  never 
heard  him  say  a  harsh  word  to  anybody. 
I  never  heard  him  speak  a  word  of 
complaint  even.  These  other  gentle- 
men, the  members  of  the  cabinet,  like 
human  beings  in  general,  were  not 
pleased  with  everything.  Much  was 
imperfect ;  much  was  not  ordered  in  the 
best  way;  much,  perhaps,  might  have 
been  done  better  if  they  individually 
had  had  charge  of  it.  Not  so  with  the 
President.  He  was  most  calm,  equable, 
uncomplaining,  and,  to  my  mind,  one 
of  the  happiest  men  that  I  have  ever 
known.  He  always  had  a  pleasant  word 
for  everybody.  What  he  said  showed 
31 


the  profoundest  thought,  even  when  he 
was  joking.  He  seemed  to  see  every 
side  of  every  question.  He  never  was 
impatient,  he  never  was  in  a  hurry,  and 
he  never  tried  to  hurry  anybody  else. 
To  every  one  he  was  pleasant  and  cor- 
dial; yet  they  all  felt  that  it  was  his 
word  that  went  at  last,  and  until  he  had 
decided,  the  case  had  n't  been  decided, 
and  the  final  orders  not  issued  yet. 

But,  before  going  further,  let  me  en- 
deavor to  give  those  in  this  audience 
who  never  saw  Mr.  Lincoln  some  idea 
of  his  personal  appearance.  He  was 
a  very  tall  man  —  six  feet  four  inches. 
His  complexion  was  dark,  his  eyes  and 
hair  black,  and,  though  he  was  of  lean, 
spare  habit,  I  should  suppose  he  must 
have  weighed  over  two  hundred  pounds. 
32 


PRESIDENT    LINCOLN. 


THE  FIRST  READING  OF  THE  EMANCIPATE 

PAINTED    AT    THE    WHITE     HOUSE    BY   I 

In  the  upper  left-hand  corner  the  artist  introduced  a  portrait  of  S 
The  portrait  over  the  mantelpiece 


J  PROCLAMATION  BEFORE  THE  CABINET. 

.    FRANK     B.    CARPENTER     IN     1864. 

3n  Cameron,  first  Secretary  of  War  under  President  Lincoln. 
f  ex- President  Andrew  Jackson. 


He  was  a  man  of  fine  fiber,  and  thus  a 
brain  of  superior  power  was  contained 
in  a  small  but  rather  elongated  skull. 
Horatio  Seymour  once  spoke  of  him  as 
a.  man  "who  wore  a  No.  7  hat  and  a 
No.  14  boot."  His  movements  were 
rather  angular,  but  never  awkward,  and 
he  was  never  burdened  with  that  fre- 
quent curse  of  unfortunate  genius,  the 
dreadful  oppression  of  petty  self-con- 
sciousness. 

It  was  a  most  remarkable  character, 
that  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  had  the 
most  comprehensive,  the  most  judicious 
mind;  he  was  the  least  faulty  in  his 
conclusions  of  any  man  that  I  have  ever 
known.  He  never  stepped  too  soon, 
and  he  never  stepped  too  late.  Just 
consider,  if  you  can,  the  problem  that 
«  33 


was  before  him  when  he  became  Presi- 
dent: One  third  of  the  country  in  open 
rebellion — not  merely  in  rebellion  on 
account  of  this  peculiar  property  in 
slaves  that  we  have  spoken  of,  but  also 
because  its  people  had  an  intense  con- 
viction that  they  had  the  right,  under 
the  Constitution,  to  leave  the  Union 
when  they  thought  it  was  advantageous 
to  do  so. 

They  had  come  into  the  Union,  they 
had  accepted  the  Constitution,  and  they 
could  n't  admit  that  that  was  an  irrev- 
ocable transaction.  The  right  of  rebel- 
lion had  been  talked  of  in  every  quarter. 
Every  man  has  a  right  to  rebel,  we  were 
told,  if  only  he  is  willing  to  take  the 
consequences.  That  was  the  doctrine  of 
our  seceding  countrymen  in  the  South. 
34 


They  were  defending  their  property  as 
we  would  defend  ours,  and  they  were 
defending  what  they  considered  to  be 
an  inherent  right,  the  right  of  every 
freeman  to  say  whether  he  will  submit 
to  the  government  that  is  over  him,  or 
rebel  and  take  the  consequences.  And 
I  am  bound  to  declare  that  the  most  of 
them  were  just  as  sincere  in  their  pur- 
pose and  their  passion  as  we  were  in 
ours. 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  not  what  you  would 
call  an  educated  man.  The  college  that 
he  had  attended  was  that  which  a  man 
attends  who  gets  up  at  daylight  to  hoe 
the  corn,  and  sits  up  at  night  to  read 
the  best  book  he  can  find,  by  the  side 
of  a  burning  pine-knot.  What  education 
he  had,  he  had  picked  up  in  that  way. 
35 


He  had  read  a  great  many  books,  and 
all  the  books  that  he  had  read  he  knew. 
He  had  a  tenacious  memory,  just  as  he 
had  the  ability  to  see  the  essential  thing. 
He  never  took  an  unimportant  point 
and  went  off  upon  that;  but  he  always 
laid  hold  of  the  real  thing,  of  the  real 
question,  and  attended  to  that,  without 
attending  to  the  others  any  more  than 
was  indispensably  necessary. 

Thus,  while  we  say  that  Mr.  Lincoln 
was  an  uneducated  man,  uneducated  in 
the  sense  that  we  recognize  here  in  New 
Haven,  or  at  any  other  great  college 
town,  he  yet  had  a  singularly  perfect 
education  in  regard  to  everything  that 
concerns  the  practical  affairs  of  life. 
His  judgment  was  excellent,  and  his 
information  was  always  accurate.  He 
36 


knew  what  the  thing  was.  He  was  a 
man  of  genius,  and,  contrasted  with 
men  of  education,  genius  will  always 
carry  the  day.  I  remember  very  well 
going  into  Mr.  Stanton's  room  in  the 
War  Department  on  the  day  of  the 
Gettysburg  celebration,  and  he  said, 
"Have  you  seen  these  Gettysburg 
speeches?" 

"  No,"  said  I ;  "  I  did  n't  know  you 
had  them." 

He  said,  "Yes;  and  the  people  will 
be  delighted  with  them.  Edward  Ever- 
ett has  made  a  speech  that  will  make 
three  columns  in  the  newspapers,  and 
Mr.  Lincoln  has  made  a  speech  of  per- 
haps forty  or  fifty  lines.  Everett's  is 
the  speech  of  a  scholar,  polished  to  the 
last  possibility.  It  is  elegant  and  it  is 
37 


learned;  but  Lincoln's  speech  will  be 
read  by  a  thousand  men  where  one 
reads  Everett's,  and  will  be  remem- 
bered as  long  as  anybody's  speeches  are 
remembered  who  speaks  in  the  English 
language." 

That  was  the  truth.  If  you  will  com- 
pare those  two  speeches  now  you  will 
get  an  idea  how  superior  genius  is  to 
education;  how  superior  that  intellec- 
tual faculty  is  which  sees  the  vitality  of 
a  question,  and  knows  how  to  state  it; 
how  superior  that  intellectual  faculty  is 
which  regards  everything  with  the  fire 
of  earnestness  in  the  soul,  with  the  re- 
lentless purpose  of  a  heart  devoted  to 
objects  beyond  literature. 

Another  remarkable  peculiarity  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  was  that  he  seemed  to 
38 


have  no  illusions.  He  had  no  freakish 
notions  that  things  were  so,  or  might 
be  so,  when  they  were  not  so.  All  his 
thinking  and  all  his  reasoning,  all  his 
mind,  in  short,  was  based  continually 
upon  actual  facts,  and  upon  facts  of 
which,  as  I  said,  he  saw  the  essence. 
I  never  heard  him  say  anything  that 
was  not  so.  I  never  heard  him  foretell 
things;  he  told  what  they  were,  but  I 
never  heard  him  intimate  that  such  and 
such  consequences  were  likely  to  happen 
without  the  consequences  following.  I 
should  say,  perhaps,  that  his  greatest 
quality  was  wisdom.  And  that  is  some- 
thing superior  to  talent,  superior  to 
education.  I  do  not  think  it  can  be 
acquired.  He  had  it;  he  was  wise;  he 
was  not  mistaken ;  he  saw  things  as  they 
39 


were.  All  the  advice  that  he  gave  was 
wise,  it  was  judicious,  and  it  was  always 
timely.  This  wisdom,  it  is  scarcely  ne- 
cessary to  add,  had  its  animating  phi- 
losophy in  his  own  famous  words, 
"  With  charity  toward  all,  with  malice 
toward  none."  Or,  to  afford  a  more 
extended  illustration,  let  me  quote,  from 
Nicolay  and  Hay's  "History"  (vol.  vi, 
p.  152),  the  main  part  of  his  most  ad- 
mirable letter  of  August  22,  1862,  to 
Horace  Greeley: 

If  there  be  those  who  would  not  save  the  Union 
unless  they  could  at  the  same  time  save  slavery,  I 
do  not  agree  with  them.  If  there  be  those  who 
would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the 
same  time  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with 
them.  My  paramount  object  in  this  struggle  is  to 
save  the  Union,  and  is  not  either  to  save  or  to 
destroy  slavery.  If  I  could  save  the  Union  with- 

40 


out  freeing  any  slave,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I 
could  save  it  by  freeing  all  the  slaves,  I  would  do 
it ;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing  some  and  leav- 
ing others  alone,  I  would  also  do  that.  What  I  do 
about  slavery  and  the  colored  race,  I  do  because  I 
believe  it  helps  to  save  the  Union ;  and  what  I  for- 
bear, I  forbear  because  I  do  not  believe  it  would 
help  to  save  the  Union.  I  shall  do  less  whenever 
I  shall  believe  what  I  am  doing  hurts  the  cause, 
and  I  shall  do  more  whenever  I  shall  believe  doing 
more  will  help  the  cause.  I  shall  try  to  correct 
errors  when  shown  to  be  errors,  and  I  shall  adopt 
new  views  so  fast  as  they  shall  appear  to  be  true 
views.  I  have  here  stated  my  purpose  according  to 
my  view  of  official  duty ;  and  I  intend  no  modifi- 
cation of  my  oft-expressed  personal  wish  that  all 
men  everywhere  could  be  free. 

Another  remarkable  quality  was  his 
personal  kindness.  He  was  kind  at 
heart,  not  from  mere  politeness.  As  I 
said,  I  never  heard  him  say  an  unkind 
thing  about  anybody.  Now  and  then 
f  41 


he  would  laugh  at  something  jocose  or 
satirical  that  somebody  had  done  or 
said,  but  it  was  always  pleasant  humor. 
I  noticed  his  sweetness  of  nature  par- 
ticularly with  his  little  son,  a  child  at 
that  time  perhaps  seven  or  nine  years 
old,  who  used  to  roam  the  departments, 
and  whom  everybody  called  "Tad." 
He  had  a  defective  palate,  and  could  n't 
speak  very  plainly.  Often  I  have  sat 
by  his  father,  reporting  to  him  about 
some  important  matter  that  I  had  been 
ordered  to  inquire  into,  and  he  would 
have  this  boy  on  his  knee;  and,  while 
he  would  perfectly  understand  the  re- 
port, the  striking  thing  about  him  was 
his  affection  for  the  child. 

He  was   good  to  everybody.    Once 
there   was    a    great    gathering   at   the 

4* 


White  House  on  New  Year's  day,  and 
all  the  diplomats  came  in  their  uni- 
forms, and  all  the  officers  of  the  ar- 
my and  navy  in  Washington  were  in 
full  costume.  A  little  girl  of  mine 
said,  "Papa,  could  n't  you  take  me 
over"  to  see  that?"  I  said  yes;  so  I 
took  her  over  and  put  her  in  a  corner, 
where  she  beheld  this  gorgeous  show. 
When  it  was  finished,  I  went  up  to 
Mr.  Lincoln,  and  said,  "  I  have  a  little 
girl  here  who  wants  to  shake  hands 
with  you."  He  went  over  to  her,  and 
took  her  up  and  kissed  her  and  talked 
to  her.  She  will  never  forget  it  if  she 
lives  to  be  a  thousand  years  old.  That 
was  the  nature  of  the  man.  I  must  tell 
another  story  to  illustrate  the  same 
point. 

43 


Whenever  an  important  campaign  of 
the  armies  began  Mr.  Lincoln  liked  to 
send  me,  because  when  I  went,  with  my 
newspaper  experience,  he  got  a  clear  re- 
port of  everything  that  happened.  The 
generals  did  n't  like  to  sit  down,  after 
fighting  all  day,  and  write  a  report,  and 
they  were  always  glad  to  have  me  come 
to  them.  Well,  when  General  Grant 
went  out  for  the  campaign  in  the  Wil- 
derness,—  that  was  the  last  great  cam- 
paign, which  ended  in  the  surrender  of 
Richmond, —  for  two  days  we  had  no 
reports.  One  evening  I  got  a  mes- 
sage to  come  to  the  War  Department. 
There  I  found  the  President  and  Mr. 
Stanton. 

Mr.  Lincoln  said,  "We  are  troubled 
about  this  business  down  in  the  Wilder- 
44 


ness.  We  don't  know  what  is  going  on. 
I  would  like  you  to  go  down." 

I  said,  "Certainly." 

"How  soon  can  you  be  ready?" 
said  he. 

I  said,  "It  will  take  twenty  minutes 
to  go  home  and  change  my  clothes,  and 
get  the  things  that  I  want  to  take,  and 
get  my  horse  saddled,  and  then  it  will 
take  twenty  minutes  to  get  a  train.  Be- 
sides, we  must  have  an  escort." 

"Well,"  said  he,  "you  are  willing  to 
go?" 

"Why,  yes,"  I  said;  "I  am  delighted. 
I  want  to  see  it." 

So   I  went  and  ordered  a  train,  got 

my  things  all  ready,  and  got  an  escort 

provided  to  defend  the  train  after  we 

had  got  out  beyond  our  lines,  and  then 

45 


went  down  and  got  into  a  car.  Some- 
how we  did  n't  start,  and  presently 
there  came  a  man  on  horseback,  who 
said  to  me,  "  The  President  wants  you 
at  the  War  Department."  So  I  rode 
back  to  the  War  Department,  and  there 
was  Mr.  Lincoln  with  Mr.  Stanton. 
The  President  said: 

"  I  have  been  thinking  about  this, 
Dana,  and  I  don't  like  to  send  you. 
There  is  Jeb  Stuart,  with  his  cavalry, 
roaming  over  the  region  that  you  will 
have  to  cross,  and  I  am  afraid  to  have 
you  go." 

Said  I,  "Mr.  Lincoln,  is  that  the 
reason  you  called  me  back  here?" 

"Yes,"  he  said;  "I  don't  like  to 
have  you  go." 

I  said,  "I  don't  think  that  is  a  very 
46 


good  reason,  because  I  have  a  good 
horse  and  forty  troopers,  and  we  are 
able  to  run  if  they  are  too  many  for  us, 
and  if  they  are  not,  we  can  fight." 

."Well,"  said  he,  "I  am  glad  to  hear 
you  say  that,  because  I  really  want  you 
to  go,  but  I  could  n't  send  you  out  un- 
til I  felt  sure  that  you  were  entirely 
willing  yourself." 

"Well,"  I  answered,  "you  are  the 
first  general  that  ever  gave  orders  in 
that  way,  I  guess." 

That  was  the  man  —  kindly  and  af- 
fectionate to  everybody.  I  don't  believe 
he  ever  spoke  a  cross  word  even  to  his 
wife.  That  is  saying  a  good  deal,  is  n't 
it,  gentlemen? 

These  are  amiable  and  lovable  per- 
sonal qualities,  but  the  great  thing  was 
47 


the  fact  that  he  succeeded — that  the 
Civil  War  was  ended  under  his  rule. 
He  succeeded  with  the  forces  of  the 
anti-slavery  States  in  putting  down  a 
rebellion  in  which  12,000,000  people 
were  concerned,  determined  people, 
educated  people,  fighting  for  their 
ideas  and  their  property,  fighting  to 
the  last,  fighting  to  the  death.  I  don't 
think  there  is  anything  else  in  history 
to  compare  with  that  achievement. 
How  did  he  do  it? 

In  the  first  place,  he  never  was  in 
haste.  As  I  said,  he  never  took  a  step 
too  soon,  and  also  he  never  took  a  step 
too  late.  When  the  whole  Northern 
country  seemed  to  be  clamoring  for  him 
to  issue  a  proclamation  abolishing  sla- 
very, he  did  n't  do  it.  Deputation  after 
48 


deputation  went  to  Washington.  I  re- 
member once  a  hundred  gentlemen 
came,  dressed  in  black  coats,  mostly 
clergymen,  from  Massachusetts.  They 
appealed  to  him  to  proclaim  the  aboli- 
tion of  slavery.  But  he  did  n't  do  it. 
He  allowed  Mr.  Cameron  and  General 
Butler  to  execute  their  great  idea  of 
treating  slaves  as  contraband  of  war, 
and  of  protecting  those  who  had  got 
into  our  lines  against  being  recaptured 
by  their  Southern  owners;  but  he 
would  not  prematurely  make  the  pro- 
clamation that  was  so  much  desired. 
Finally  the  time  came,  and  of  that  he 
was  the  judge.  Nobody  else  decided  it; 
nobody  commanded  it;  the  proclama- 
tion was  issued  as  he  thought  best,  and 
it  was  efficacious.  The  people  of  the 
g  49 


North,  who  during  the  long  contest 
over  slavery  had  always  stood  strenu- 
ously by  the  compromises  of  the  Con- 
stitution, might  themselves  have  be- 
come half  rebels  if  this  proclamation 
had  been  issued  too  soon.  At  last  they 
were  tired  of  waiting,  tired  of  endeavor- 
ing to  preserve  even  a  show  of  regard 
for  what  was  called  the  compromises  of 
the  Constitution  when  they  believed  the 
Constitution  itself  was  in  danger.  Thus 
public  opinion  was  ripe  when  the  pro- 
clamation came,  and  that  was  the  be- 
ginning of  the  end. 

This  unerring  judgment,  this  patience 
which  waited  and  which  knew  when  the 
right  time  had  arrived  —  these  were  in- 
tellectual qualities  that  I  do  not  find 
exercised  upon  any  such  scale  by  any 
5° 


other  man  in  history,  and  with  such 
unerring  precision.  This  proves  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  to  have  been  intellectually 
one  of  the  greatest  of  rulers.  If  we 
look  through  the  record  of  great  men, 
where  has  there  ever  been  one  to  be 
matched  alongside  of  him  ?  I  don't 
know.  He  could  have  issued  this  pro- 
clamation two  years  before,  perhaps,  and 
the  consequence  of  it  might  have  been 
our  entire  defeat ;  but  when  it  came  it 
did  its  work,  and  it  did  us  no  harm 
whatever.  Nobody  protested  against  it, 
not  even  the  Confederates  themselves; 
but  they  felt  it  deeply. 

Another  interesting  fact  about  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  is  that  he  developed  into 
a  great  military  man ;  that  is  to  say,  a 
man  of  supreme  military  judgment.  I 


do  not  risk  anything  in  saying  that  if 
you  will  study  the  records  of  the  war, 
and  studf  the  writings  relating  to  it, 
you  will  agree  with  me  that  the  greatest 
general  we  had,  greater  than  Grant  or 
Thomas,  was  Abraham  Lincoln.  It  was 
not  so  at  the  beginning ;  but  after  three 
or  four  years  of  constant  practice  in  the 
science  and  art  of  war,  he  arrived  at  this 
extraordinary  knowledge  of  it,  so  that 
Von  Moltke  was  not  a  better  general, 
or  an  abler  planner  or  expounder  of  a 
campaign,  than  was  President  Lincoln. 
To  sum  it  up,  he  was  a  born  leader 
of  men.  He  knew  human  nature;  he 
knew  what  chord  to  strike,  and  was 
never  afraid  to  strike  it  when  he  be- 
lieved that  the  time  had  arrived.  On 
this  let  me  tell  another  story. 
5* 


Lincoln  was  a  supreme  politician,  and 
he  was  a  politician  who  understood 
politics  because  he  understood  human 
nature.  And  finally  the  idea  was  con- 
ceived that  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  should  be  amended  so 
that  slavery  should  be  prohibited  in  the 
Constitution.  That  was  a  change  in 
our  polity,  and  it  was  also  a  most  im- 
portant military  measure.  It  was  in- 
tended, not  merely  as  a  means  of 
prohibiting  slavery  and  decreeing  its 
abolition,  but  as  a  means  of  affecting 
the  judgment  and  the  feeling  and  the 
anticipations  of  those  in  rebellion.  It 
was  believed  that  that  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  would  be  equivalent 
to  new  armies  in  the  field,  equivalent  to 
sending  a  hundred  thousand  men  to 

53 


fight,  because  this  would  be  an  intellec- 
tual army  and  an  intellectual  force  that 
would  tend  to  paralyze  the  enemy  and 
break  the  continuity  of  his  ideas.  In 
order  to  amend  the  Constitution  it  was 
necessary  first  to  have  the  proposed 
amendment  approved  by  two  thirds  of 
the  States;  and  when  that  question 
came  to  be  considered  the  issue  was 
seen  to  be  so  close  that  one  State  more 
was  necessary.  Then  the  State  of  Ne- 
vada was  organized  to  answer  that  pur- 
pose, and  was  admitted  into  the  Union. 
I  have  heard  people  sometimes  com- 
plain of  Nevada  as  a  superfluous  and 
petty  State,  not  big  enough  to  be  a 
State ;  but  when  I  hear  that  complaint 
I  always  think  of  Abraham  Lincoln's 
saying,  "It  is  easier  to  admit  Nevada 
54 


than  to  raise  another  million  of  sol- 
diers." 

Well,  when  the  question  finally  came 
around  to  be  voted  upon  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  it  required  three 
quarters  of  the  votes;  and  this  vote, 
this  final  decision,  was  canvassed  ear- 
nestly, intensely,  most  anxiously,  for  a 
long  time  beforehand.  At  last,  late  one 
afternoon,  the  President  came  into  my 
office,  a  room  in  the  third  story  of  the 
War  Department.  He  used  to  come 
there  sometimes  rather  than  send  for 
me,  because  he  was  very  fond  of  walk- 
ing, and  liked  to  go  about  a  good  deal. 
He  came  in,  and  shut  the  door. 

"  Dana,"  he  said,  "  I  am  very  anxious 
about  this  vote.  It  has  got  to  be  taken 
next  week.  The  time  is  very  short.  It 
55 


is  going  to  be  a  great  deal  closer  than  I 
wish  it  was." 

"  There  are  plenty  of  Democrats  who 
wish  to  vote  for  it,"  I  replied,  "and  who 
will  vote  for  it.  There  is  James  E.  Eng- 
lish of  Connecticut;  I  think  he  is  sure, 
is  n't  he?" 

"  Oh  yes ;  he  is  sure  on  the  merits 
of  the  question." 

"Then,"  said   I,  "there's   ' Sunset' 
\ 

Cox  of  Ohio.    How  is  he?" 

"  He  is  sure  and  fearless.  But  there 
are  some  others  that  I  am  not  clear 
about.  There  are  three  that  you  can 
deal  with  better  than  anybody  else,  per- 
haps, as  you  know  them  all.  I  wish 
you  would  send  for  them." 

He  told  me  who  they  were ;  it  is  n't 
necessary  to  repeat  the  names  here.  One 
56 


man  was  from  New  Jersey  and  two 
from  New  York. 

"What  will  they  be  likely  to  want?" 
I  asked. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  the  President ; 
"I  don't  know.  It  makes  no  difference, 
though,  what  they  want.  Here  is  the 
alternative:  that  we  carry  this  vote,  or 
be  compelled  to  raise  another  million, 
and  I  don't  know  how  many  more  men, 
and  fight  no  one  knows  how  long.  It 
is  a  question  of  three  votes  or  new 
armies." 

"Well,  sir,"  said  I,  "what  shall  I  say 
to  these  gentlemen?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  he ;  "  but  I  say 
this  to  you,  that  whatever  promise  you 
make  to  those  men,  I  will  perform  it." 

Well,  now,  this  is  a  fact  that  I  do 
h  57 


not  think  is  recorded  in  any  history.  I 
don't  believe  my  friend,  Thomas  C. 
Acton,  who  sits  back  there,  ever  heard 
of  it  before.  I  sent  for  the  men  and 
saw  them  one  by  one.  I  found  that 
they  were  afraid  of  their  party.  They 
said  that  some  fellows  in  the  party 
would  be  down  on  them.  Two  of  them 
wanted  internal-revenue  collectors  ap- 
pointed. "You  shall  have  it,"  I  said. 
Another  one  wanted  a  very  important 
appointment  about  the  custom-house 
of  New  York.  I  knew  the  man  well 
whom  he  wanted  to  have  appointed. 
He  was  a  Republican,  though  the  con- 
gressman was  a  Democrat.  I  had  served 
with  him  in  the  Republican  party  Coun- 
ty Committee  of  New  York.  The 
office  was  worth  perhaps  $20,000  a 
58 


year.  When  the  congressman  stated 
the  case  I  asked  him,  "Do  you  want 
that?" 

"Yes,"  said  he. 

"Well,"  I  answered,  "you  shall  have 
it." 

"I  understand,  of  course,"  said  he, 
"that  you  are  not  saying  this  on  your 
own  authority  ? " 

"  Oh  no,"  said  I ;  "  I  am  saying  it  on 
the  authority  of  the  President." 

Well,  he  voted ;  the  amendment  was 
carried,  and  slavery  was  abolished  by 
constitutional  prohibition  in  all  of  the 
United  States.  That  was  done,  and  I 
felt  that  this  little  piece  of  side  politics 
was  one  of  the  most  judicious,  humane, 
and  wise  uses  of  executive  authority  that 
I  had  ever  assisted  in  or  witnessed. 

59 


But  this  appointment  in  the  New 
York  custom-house  was  to  wait  a  few 
weeks,  until  the  term  of  the  actual  in- 
cumbent had  run  out.  My  friend,  the 
Democratic  congressman,  was  quite 
willing.  He  said,  "That  's  all  right;  I 
am  in  no  hurry."  Well,  before  the  time 
had  expired,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  murdered 
and  Andrew  Johnson  became  President. 
I  had  gone  away,  and  was  in  the  West, 
when  one  day  I  got  a  telegram  from 
Roscoe  Conkling:  "Come  to  Wash- 
ington." So  I  went.  He  said: 

"  I  want  you  to  go  and  see  President 
Johnson,  and  tell  him  that  this  is  a 
sacred  promise  of  Mr.  Lincoln's,  and 
that  it  must  be  kept." 

Then  I  went  to  the  White  House, 
and  saw  President  Johnson. 
60 


"This  is  Mr.  Lincoln's  promise,"  I 
urged.  "He  regarded  it  as  saving  the 
necessity  of  another  call  for  troops,  and 
raising  perhaps  a  million  more  men  to 
continue  the  war.  I  trust,  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, that  you  will  see  your  way  clear 
to  execute  this  promise." 

"Well,  Mr.  Dana,"  he  replied,  "I 
don't  say  that  I  won't;  but  I  have  ob- 
served in  the  course  of  my  experience 
that  such  bargains  tend  to  immorality." 

The  appointment  was  not  made.  I 
am  happy  to  say,  however,  that  the 
gentleman  to  whom  the  promise  was 
given  never  found  any  fault,  either  with 
President  Lincoln  or  with  the  Assistant 
Secretary  who  had  been  the  means  of 
making  the  promise  to  him. 

There  is  perceptible,  I  think,  a  very 
61 


decided  disposition  to  convert  this  great 
element  in  our  history  —  the  savior  of 
the  nation,  the  man  who  brought  us 
through  that  terrible  Civil  War  with 
our  liberties  undiminished  —  to  convert 
him  into  a  kind  of  hero  of  romance, 
a  legendary  figure.  He  is  sometimes 
thought  to  have  been  queer  and  eccen- 
tric, and  there  are  a  good  many  stories 
that  seem  to  favor  that  idea.  I  never 
found  anything  eccentric  in  him.  I 
found  only  wisdom  and  humor — hu- 
mor that  never  failed,  and  that  always 
was  fresh,  delightful,  and  relieving  to 
the  awful  seriousness  of  the  duties  that 
we  were  engaged  in  every  day. 

I  remember  one  evening,  just  before 
the   Presidential   election  of  '64.    The 
decision,  it  was  plain,  would  turn  on  the 
62 


vote  of  Pennsylvania,  and  the  State 
election  of  Pennsylvania,  which  then 
took  place  in  October,  a  month  before 
the  Presidential  election,  was  pretty 
sure  to  show  how  the  Presidential  elec- 
tion would  go  in  that  State.  So,  on  the 
evening  'of  the  day  when  that  election 
had  been  held,  we  were  all  gathered  in 
the  War  Department,  the  President, 
Mr.  Stanton,  Chief  Justice  Chase,  Mr. 
Welles,  and  the  principal  generals  that 
were  then  in  Washington.  Perhaps 
there  were  twenty  gentlemen  there. 
When  I  came  in,  at  about  ten  o'clock, 
the  President  said  to  me,  "  Come  here, 
Dana;  sit  down  here."  So  I  sat  down 
beside  him.  The  others  were  all  sitting 
around,  as  solemn  as  a  camp-meeting. 
Indeed,  it  was  a  pretty  solemn  occa- 

63 


sion,  because  on  the  decision  of  this 
election  hung  the  question  whether  we 
were  there  or  were  not  there.  The 
President  looked  over  to  me,  and  said, 
"  Did  you  ever  read  anything  of  Petro- 
leum V.  Nasby?"  I  answered,  "Yes." 
"Well,"  he  said,  "I  want  to  read  you 
something."  So  he  began  to  read  just 
loud  enough  for  me  to  hear.  Mr.  Stan- 
ton  could  n't  stand  this.  He  got  up, 
and  went  off  into  the  telegraph  room 
that  was  just  alongside.  Presently  he 
opened  the  door,  and  called  me :  "  I 
have  got  something  for  you."  So  I 
went  into  the  telegraph  office.  I  found 
that  he  had  n't  any  work  for  me.  He 
simply  wanted  to  objurgate  the  man  who 
could  sit  down  at  such  a  time  and  read 
such  silly,  stupid  stuff  as  that.  But  that 
64 


constant  humor  which  Mr.  Lincoln  in- 
fused into  everything  was  really  what 
saved  him,  and  brought  him  through 
the  whole  of  this  immense  suffering  and 
struggle  in  good  health  and  spirits  at 
last. 

I  ought  to  say  that  this  disposition 
that  I  have  just  referred  to,  to  invent 
queer  stories  about  Mr.  Lincoln,  is  get- 
ting corrected.  The  life  of  him  which 
Mr.  McClure  is  now  publishing,  and 
which  Miss  Ida  Tarbell  is  writing,  is 
based  upon  a  thorough  investigation  of 
the  facts  in  his  history,  and  his  family's 
history,  and  the  history  of  his  child- 
hood, and  the  experience  of  the  family 
in  Kentucky,  Indiana,  and  Illinois  — 
an  investigation  that  has  not  been  made 
before.  It  proves,  in  the  first  place, 
i  65 


that  Mr.  Lincoln  did  not  come  of  a 
trifling,  silly,  or  stupid  family.  He  be- 
longed to  the  Lincolns  of  Hingham, 
Massachusetts,  and  he  was  related  to 
the  famous  Governor  Lincoln.  Many 
stories  about  his  marriage,  too,  are  not 
so.  Lincoln  was  a  straight,  upright,  re- 
spectable man.  He  was  a  poor  man, 
picking  up  knowledge  as  best  he  could, 
and  rising  by  his  own  talent,  until  he 
reached  a  great  place  in  the  bar  of  Illi- 
nois, and  finally  became  President  of 
the  United  States. 

I  regard  the  book  which  Mr.  Mc- 
Clure  is  publishing  as  a  public  benefac- 
tion. With  this  book  presenting  all 
these  minute  details,  and  with  the  great 
work  of  Hay  and  Nicolay,  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's private  secretaries,  giving  the 
66 


most  important  documents,  we  shall 
have  amply  satisfactory  and  faithful  ac- 
counts of  perhaps  the  greatest  man  in 
modern  American  history,  perhaps  the 
greatest  man  in  the  modern  history  of 
mankind. 

Let  me  bring  these  reminiscences  to 
a  close  with  another  story,  which  relates 
to  the  last  day  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  life.  It 
was  one  of  my  duties  in  the  War  De- 
partment to  receive  the  reports  of  the 
officers  of  the  Secret  Service  in  every 
part  of  the  country.  One  cloudy  after- 
noon I  got  a  telegram  from  the  provost- 
marshal  in  Portland,  Maine,  saying,  "  I 
have  positive  information  that  Jacob 
Thompson  will  pass  through  Portland 
to-night,  in  order  to  take  a  steamer 
for  England.  What  are  your  orders  ? " 
67 


Jacob  Thompson  of  Mississippi,  as 
you  know,  had  been  Secretary  of  the 
Interior  in  President  Buchanan's  ad- 
ministration. He  was  a  conspicuous 
secessionist,  and  for  some  time  had 
been  employed  in  Canada  as  a  semi- 
diplomatic  agent  of  the  Confederate 
government,  getting  up  raids,  of  which 
the  notorious  attack  on  St.  Albans,  Ver- 
mont, was  a  specimen.  I  took  the  tele- 
gram, and  went  down  and  read  it  to 
Mr.  Stanton.  His  order  was  prompt: 
"Arrest  him!"  But  as  I  was  going  out 
of  the  door  he  called  to  me,  and  said, 
"  No,  wait ;  better  go  over  and  see  the 
President." 

At  the   White   House   all    business 
was   over,  and   I   went  into  the  Presi- 
dent's   business    room    without    meet- 
68 


ing  any  one.  Opening  the  door,  there 
seemed  to  be  no  one  in  the  room,  but 
as  I  was  turning  to  go  out  Mr.  Lin- 
coln called  me  from  a  little  side  room, 
where  he  was  washing  his  hands: 

"Halloo,  Dana!"  said  he.  "What 
is  it?  What's  up?" 

Then  I  read  him  the  telegram. 

"  What  does  Stanton  say  ? "  he  asked. 

"He  says  arrest  him,  but  that  I 
should  refer  the  question  to  you." 

"Well,"  said  he,  slowly,  wiping  his 
hands,  "  no ;  I  rather  think  not.  When 
you  have  got  an  elephant  by  the  hind 
leg,  and  he  is  trying  to  run  away,  it  *s 
best  to  let  him  run." 

With  this  direction,  I  returned  to 
the  War  Department. 

"Well,  what  says  he?"  asked  Mr. 
Stanton. 

69 


"He  says  that  when  you  have  got  an 
elephant  by  the  hind  leg,  and  he  is  try- 
ing to  run  away,  it  's  best  to  let  him 
run." 

"  Oh,  stuff! "  said  Stanton. 

That  night  I  was  awaked  from  a 
sound  sleep  with  the  news  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  been  shot,  and  that  the 
Secretary  wanted  me  at  Manager  Ford's 
house.  I  found  the  President  lying  un- 
conscious, though  breathing  heavily,  on 
a  bed  in  a  small  side  room,  while  all 
the  members  of  the  cabinet,  and  the 
Chief  Justice  with  them,  were  gathered 
in  the  adjoining  parlor.  They  seemed 
to  be  almost  as  much  paralyzed  as  the 
unconscious  sufferer  within  the  little 
chamber.  The  surgeons  said  there  was 
no  hope.  Mr.  Stanton  alone  was  in  full 
activity. 

70 


"Sit  down  here,"  said  he;  "I  want 
you." 

Then  he  began,  and  dictated  orders 
one  after  another,  which  I  wrote  out 
and  sent  swiftly  to  the  .telegraph.  All 
those  orders  were  designed  to  keep  the 
business  of  the  government  in  full  mo- 
tion till  the  crisis  should  be  over.  It 
was  perhaps  two  o'clock  in  the  morning 
before  he  said,  "That  's  enough.  Now 
you  can  go  home." 

The  next  morning,  just  about  day- 
light, I  was  awaked  by  a  rapping  on  a 
lower  window.  It  was  Colonel  Pelouze 
of  the  Adjutant-General's  office,  who 
said: 

"Mr.  Dana,  the  President  is  dead, 
and  Mr.  Stanton  directs  you  to  arrest 
Jacob  Thompson." 

The  order  was  sent  to  Portland,  but 
71 


Thompson  could  n't  be  found  there. 
He  had  taken  the  Canadian  road  to 
Halifax. 

And  so  Lincoln  finished  his  marvel- 
ous career  and  passed  to  the  other 
world,  leaving  other  men  to  deal  with 
the  arduous  and  perilous  questions  of 
reconstruction.  He  had,  indeed,  done 
enough,  and  it  may  be  he  was  even 
fortunate  in  the  tragedy  of  his  death. 
Who  knows  ? 

But,  as  we  bid  him  farewell  to-night, 
we  can  declare  that  while  he  was  great 
in  genius,  in  character,  and  in  opportu- 
nities, he  was  even  greater  in  sanity  of 
heart  and  elevation  of  spirit.  While  he 
was  entirely  human,  there  was  no  mean 
fiber  in  his  composition,  no  base,  petty, 
selfish  impulse  in  his  soul. 
72 


